4.30

only one and one only. additional memories were not required to set their nerves 2 rattling and heart 2 thundering. this one came in the scent of a particular bloom had thrived in the garden. not a crime witnessed. kept within the family until they got a good therapist.

psychotherapy is at its best an art

Some of my patients want therapy to be a certain way. As a professional I want to be open and give you what you want. Therapy cannot be everything so misconceptions must be brought out and cleared away. Some want structure and psychoeducation. Others want it to be motivational, to free them from inaction. I see six to nine patients a day, and each one demands something from me, whether the demand is covert or overt, it is there. And that's a good challenge. I always try to ask the day I meet someone, how has therapy been for you in the past? what worked and what did not? What would you like it to be? I do like working with the ones who ask for a more freeform, conversational approach. Often the younger ones, Generation Z, like it this way. Psychotherapy is at its best an art. Each session becomes an adventure, an exploration. Curiosity makes it interesting. You don't always know where to begin and you may be surprised where we end up.   #katyamills

discernment

i saw you disturbed you 

were crying

may i help you?

there are ways 

one may protect ones 

energy 

#katyamills

july love

she was filling out unemployment forms 

gulping polish vodka

an easy forgotten sense of safety rocked toe to heel in the darkest corner of the bar

he lit a newport @ the edge of her lip and

with hopes of having her

played therapist   

#katyamills

mental - quattro

He was showing me unconditional positive regard.
I was telling him all the ways and places I was scarred.
He was chewing on the fat of my tales.
I was eating all my fingernails.
He was redirecting me like a train conductor.
I saw red and charged like a bull.
He was charging me through the teeth.
Paid in full.

I was waxing poetic.
His thoughts told him I was pathetic.
I gussied up to him like a whore.
He had his back to the door.
I blasted him for offering me Prozac.
He looked at me like I was crazy.
Called me a fucking throwback.
Or was it the voices in my head?

I slit my wrists and put them in his face.
He let me bleed out. Unconditionally.
I paid to have his carpet cleaned.
To keep my credit clean.
He was showing me unconditional positive regard.

I asked for a cup of tea.
He fifty-one fiftied me.

I ran away before the sedation.
Into the flickering movie
of guided imagery.

He was golden showering me
with unconditional positive regard.
I had clearly drawn up my knees,
drawn up my guard.

He drew checks off my back account.
I drew pictures of infinity.
He rented Girl, Interrupted. 
Then handled me with
more or less
care.

I was embryonic again.
Statuesque.
He wore a Buddha smile on his face.
I was unfashionably broke
and stressed.
Developmentally-challenged.
Locked up in chemical
arrest.

He poisoned me with
unconditional
positive
regard.

Mental -- the deuce

I had seen about a dozen therapists in twice as many years. They all knew what was wrong with me, and it was different every time. I guess that's what people mean when they say people change. Of course, people usually said that about someone else, not me. I would be wondering why a boy did not want to go out with me anymore? People change. Or why my best friend stopped talking to me when she went off to college, and I was still working graveyard at the White Hen? People change.

So maybe those boys and my best friend were just mental like I was. That's what I liked to tell myself. When I dissociated, I made up all sorts of personalities to keep the rumours alive. The dominatrix would reassure me she had been routinely light spanking my best friend over the holidays, because my best friend was submissive. People change. The angry feminist would tell me how my best friend got married, and that she may as well have had a lobotomy. People change. The priest who took confession from the first guy I fell in love with me, confided in me what he heard in the confessional; the guy was into guys. People change. 

Honestly, I am not sure I believed that people change. I had only to consider myself. My diagnosis always changed, but I stayed that same. So you could argue it was not really me who was changing. Just the labels. A label is stuck to the outside of something, like a nametag, but it does not alter the underlying chemistry of the thing labelled. The mad scientist told me so. And he's never wrong. He performs all sorts of important experiments all the time, just to know stuff.

He spends half the night with me at White Hen, draining whipped cream gas into my lungs. He calls them whippets. Apparently they kill brain cells that should have been dead a long time ago. The kind of cells that made me think the bad thoughts, the same kind of thinking all sorts of minimum wage workers who are mental start to have, when they are working dead end jobs going mental. I'm not even going mental. I already am.

I think I am living proof that people never change. Tonight there's only one can of whipped cream left untapped, in the White Hen. The mad scientist prescribed it to me, to get well. To kill off all those thoughts of what I wanna do to those boys and my best friend, now that they no longer have an excuse for having ditched me the way they did.

Mental (sister piece)

The sister to this piece is @ kissilent.wordpress.com

I was talking to my therapist. It was a pretty chill converse. Almost like we were friends or something. I kinda started to think of her as my friend, until she diagnosed me crazy. I thought that was really rude, coming from a friend. I let her know. She told me she wasn't my friend. I started to cry. She called me tearful. I had about had it with the labels. But I did not blow up, because at least she was right. I asked her, will I ever get better? She said it was a process. That made me feel worse. I told her she was a rotten therapist. Her affect remained unchanged. I told her she had no feelings. I asked her how does it feel, not to be able to feel? She gave me that Buddha smile. Totally unphased. I was impressed by her robot. I shut up and started listening. I had eyeliner blend into my eye from the crying, and asked for a tissue. She told me get it yourself. Not to be mean, just because (as she had explained a hundred times before) that would be caretaking.

 I stumbled blind around the room for a tissue. I fell out the window. I didn't know it was open. I was wondering how the air-conditioning was so strong that day. Or how they could afford such a skillful window washer. Because the air was so cool, the glass so clear. Before the makeup fell into my cornea. I did not report any of that, because I was supposed to only report my symptoms. Leave all the clutter thoughts up in my attic. I mean head. Well, they came out all right. But not until I landed on my attic, or the ground came up to meet me, after I shook hands with the window. I still could not see. But at least I could think straight. Props to my therapist. Shout outs to the EMTs who came and kept all my blood from running down the sidewalk and away from me.